Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Oh, how I have missed you my blog! I'm pretty much my own biggest fan (convenient, stalking oneself is so easy) and was disappointed at my lack of writing over the past two months. I fully blame myself; I've been trying to go to bed earlier which takes away from late night writing time. I have also been a bit sick for the past 10 days and spent most of my time either working or laying in bed spooning my pillows. Related: I'm an expert Big Spoon (or Spooner). If you are a fantastic Little Spoon (or Spoonee), drop me a line. Just be warned you'll wake up with me latched onto you and possibly drooling on your back. In some cultures drool is a sign of respect and admiration, and like passing well wishes onto someone in a very special/literal way. I'm not sure which cultures, but surely there must be at least one... Ideally, candidates should be male.

The downside of being sick (apart from actual being sick part) is that it's so isolating. Days and nights are spent either alone in ones office or alone in ones bedroom. Then you hear about a news story that eventually makes it to press that someone died in her apartment and no one realised for five months. You start wondering why people don't miss you and realise it's only been, like, three days. One friend who knew I was sick brought me popsicles ("This is the weirdest request I ever heard from a sick person,") which was more symbolic and meaningful than the birth of babies via stork delivery.

But anyway, I'm almost better. On Thursday I will be 100% better, tomorrow 96.4% better. Frankly, sleeping up to 12 hours a day/night is wasting my time and I am accomplishing nothing other than supporting the pharmaceutical industry through my dependency on cold/flu meds and cough syrup. I am so sick of the taste of cough syrup. My disgust alone should be enough to will away the last bits of cold particles.

On Saturday night/Sunday morning I kept having dreams of rejection. "You aren't good enough to be in the club!" "You can't hang out with us!" You kind of feel like garbage when you wake up from dreams of people telling you that you suck. How it related to life at that moment was so obvious that I felt like rolling my eyes and saying, "Really, dream? That was the best you could do? Get a bit more creative, please." Then the next night I had a dream that I had before long ago, shortly after a break-up/departure of an ex-boyfriend. This time in my dream I recognized that I had been there before, saw the ex-boyfriend there, and knew I had to change the ending of the dream and trick him into leaving. I'm not sure if I succeeded or not, but I woke up a bit confused to what year it was. ("Aloha 2009!")

Since I like to have some sort of point to posts, instead of, "My name is Jennifer and I like to write about my feelings!" (note: I actually don't like to write about my feelings, I would rather you leave with a smile on your face and a chuckle of laughter burning in your throat) today's post is about naked statues.

Oh, Poseidon - so manly! I want to bite you.

Featured above is Poseidon - Greek God of the Sea, Neptune in Roman Mythology. He bears little resemble to my first experience with someone by the name of Neptune: Sailor Neptune.

I am Sailor Neptune, not Poseidon. I am focused and determined and this is not the star crystal you are looking for. Move along.

I'm not a huge art fan. I respect the talent required to create a painting, and I enjoy standing extremely close and looking at the many layers required to create depth, colour, shadow, etc., but I couldn't spend all day happily strolling through an art museum. I do, however, like statues. In museums, on street corners, where ever. But I do sometimes wonder why Greek/Roman Gods and Goddesses are often naked. I can't imagine someone approaching me and saying, "I admire you, you do wonderful things, you must be remembered forever in a replicated stone carving of yourself..."

I, bashful yet proud, concede that yes, I am a wonderful person, and the people must remember me.

"Wonderful!" says the Sculptor. "I will create a naked, 8-foot tall tribute to you. I may save you some embarrassment and place a small maple leaf over your left nipple and a piece of seaweed over your lady bits, but I will still leave unflattering rolls and your ass crack. People will love you!"

Maybe it's harder to create a naked person? Does doing so give you more credibility as an artist? I know from drawing that it was always easiest to draw bodies covered in clothing, and the hardest part was always hands and faces. Clothes can look like anything, people parts have to actually look like people parts since we all know what they should look like. In fact, I can't help but wonder if the Nike statue ever had a head. Maybe the person creating it got frustrated and lobbed it off in anger.

Heads and hands are hard to perfect.

(I think this statue is beautiful and apparently it's housed at the Louvre, which I skipped on all three of my visits to Paris. Only now do I feel guilty. Sorry, Goddess of Victory, I am unvictorious in seeing you.)

To the person who may eventually create a naked statue of me, I have a few requests.

First, I want a lot of hair. Massive, wavy, voluptuous hair with side-swept fringe. It needn't be long, just wide and tall. I must be wearing my Jesus sandals, for they are part of my soul. I would like to look powerful and brave; this can be accomplished by giving me a war wound on my upper right thigh and claw marks on the left side of my core. If you are having trouble making my rear look flattering, I am not opposed to wearing a cape.

You don't need to include the scar on my back. It's from having a mole removed. Not very exciting. You do, however, need to include the long scar on my thigh delivered by Kitty 17 years ago. If my teeth are visible I wouldn't mind having braces. I never had braces and I think they look kind of cute on adults.

While I don't need six-pack abs, I wouldn't mind you taking a bit of artist creativity and shearing off a smidgen of my beer belly. Also, don't give me a belly button piercing. I don't like them. If you must be creative, give me wings or a keytar. Me riding an elephant would also not be discouraged.

Above all, do not sculpt any ingrown hairs. They hurt and leave scars.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Sometimes I wonder if I'm missing out on something by not being a coffee drinker. When someone is curled up by her window, mug of coffee twisted into her hand, watching the rain pour down, she looks happy and warm, enjoying the mood of the weather. When the non-coffee drinker is looking outside at the rain through the window, she looks crazy or depressed.

At my first temp job in Scotland I learned about how important coffee and tea were to them. I was offered coffee - "No thank you" - tea - "No thank you" - and invited to join on smoke breaks - "Coming out for a fag?" "Uh... what?" "Cigarette?" "Oh, no thank you." I got blank stares.

"So you don't drink tea or coffee?"
"No... I don't really like hot drinks."
"And you don't smoke?"
"No..."
"So what do you do? Everyone has to have a bad habit."
"Umm, I like beer?"

So I managed to keep some level of respect in my admin role due to my intake of hops, barley, malt, and water - all mixed and fermented to perfection.

I find myself a little envious of the coffee drinkers during mornings. I struggle to wake up in a natural ways, such as changing the standard beep beep (which I too often slept through) of my mobile phone alarm into a peppy song, eating breakfast, showering, generally walking to work, and brushing my teeth with intensely flavoured cinnamon toothpaste. This is all temporary and seems to be enough to get me to work by, oh, 9:30 or 10:00, but then I'm forced to sit still by myself in front of computer screen which tends to make me sleepy all over again and give me poor posture and wrinkles from squinting at the intense glare of the screen.

I also function awkwardly at "Let's do coffee sometime!" and then find myself starring curiously at a menu in a coffee establishment trying to figure out what to order. I have changed the meaning of "let's do coffee" to "let's do fruit punch". You can't really gossip and mingle over fruit punch in the way one can with coffee.

The pleasure of indulging in a warm beverage after being outside in the cold is also foreign to me. Yes, I join in on hot chocolate outings post sledding (which didn't happen this winter which is fine by me as I'm secretly scared of sledding and don't like hot chocolate that much), but that's more so for the social ritual than love of hot chocolate. Hot chocolate is generally far too hot when served causing me to flail my arms about like a penguin trying to fly. So I wait. Then I down it all in the span of four minutes while it's at a consumable temperature.

Did I mention that I once accidentally drank a glass of hot water when I was, like, 2? And by hot, it was probably actually luke warm and I completely over reacted and cried? And then spent the next six years being scared to operate the taps in the bathtub and would spend two hours playing in increasingly cooling water with wrinkly purple fingertips? The real, deep, psychological reason why I don't like coffee and other hot drinks. Oh, how the mistake of my past haunt my present self.

PS: I want to change careers to stunt car driver. More on that another day.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Saturday, March 5, 2011 was officially declared the first day of spring - by me. After a series of international debates among northern countries it was decided that calendar entries for season changes are not an accurate way to establish a new season. Instead, it was agreed that each region would have a season decision maker. After numerous rigorous interviews, blood samples, x-rays, and hot dog eating contests, it was decided that I was the best candidate in the PEI region. I declared the start of spring, but so far it seems to be accurate only in regard to the weekend. For example, this weekend the weather was darling and the sun was blowing kisses to all in Charlottetown, people were outside, and suddenly half of the city decided to become runners. I, of course, prefer mounting sexy things and chose to rides my bikes instead. That way I can play in traffic and let out muffled groans of pain when I miss avoiding one of Charlottetown's 6,482 potholes that developed over the winter. [Three hurrahs for living on a constantly shifting sandbar!] I'm pretty sure some of them are so deep that were we to drop something in them someone in China would trip over the object.

What would be the advantages of such a deep pothole all the way to China? I'm glad you asked, as I believe this to be a worthwhile venture and will seek government funding to accomplish this engineering feat.

Reduced importing/exporting costs for small goods. If you think Dollar Stores are full of junk now, wait until importing costs drop as transportation involves throwing the product down a hole. Note the quality of the products will not improve. Keep this in mind when you buy your pregnancy test from the Dollarama. (Photo taken at an actual Dollarama in Halifax by a concerned me. I was later told that these are just as accurate as their $20 counterparts.)

Tourism. Relating to an academic paper I proofed for a coworker, mainland Chinese residents are starting to travel more. How cheap - and convenient - would it be to simply hop into a hole through the centre of the Earth to reach your destination of McPothole Street, Charlottetown? Set up a small customs office at the end of a driveway (sorry, no room for your lemonade stand this year, kids), a few metal detectors, and all is good. Of course, this is all pending further research on the effects of through-the-Earth's-core travel on the human body. It's slightly possible you would melt.

Environmental consequences. As demonstrated in the two previous points, pollution created via transportation of goods and people would be reduced dramatically. However, again, it must be stressed that more research needs to take place on how this giant pothole through the Earth's core will effect the planet's structural integrity. I think Environment Canada and Transportation and Public Works Charlottetown would be pleased to fund this experiment.

I would also like to apologize for my miscaluculation in summer's commencement. While I expect a little bit of back and forth iffiness, the snow has been softly falling from the sky all day. Very softly and almost not noticeable, but still. However, spring has left a lasting effect. I judge snow depth by the toys and playthings in the children's playground I can see out my window. There is a bridge for them to play on and I can see at least 15 inches more of it than I could see even a week ago. I can also see a little bit of grass which has burst through light dustings of snow.

Takes one to know one.

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According to Google Analystics sometimes people are looking on my blog for specific things. If you're looking for Disney World/Commons stuff check out 2005 and 2006. Also why this blog was originally titled Lumberjack Jen - because I had to wear a lumberjack costume.